Take 2. FRIDAY'S GUIDE TO MOVIES & MUSIC. Play on.

Shoot From The Hip-hop

Tricky Tries To Deliver His Vision Of A Harsh Reality

September 15, 1995|By Greg Kot.

There is a deceptive languor about the music of Tricky, the threat of violence, the lure of lust oozing through every sensual groove on the producer-rapper's extraordinary debut album, "Maxinquaye" (Island).

On the track "Hell is Around the Corner," the slightly hoarse rap of Tricky, a k a Adrian Thaws, snakes into the cavernous spaces between beats: "Constant struggle ensures my insanity"; "My brain thinks bomb-like"; "Beware of our appetite."

This isn't the gangsta posturing of South Central Los Angeles, but a more complex, ambiguous stance. On "Aftermath," Tricky lets the phrase "Just when I thought I could not be stopped . . ." linger and fade unresolved. On a remake of "Black Steel (In the Hour of Chaos)," he turns Public Enemy's pummeling fury into a soul-tearing inner monologue. Just as often, he cedes some of his most provocative imagery to teenage singer Martine, who deadpans "drop dead" even as she provides melodic relief.

In conversation, Tricky is loquacious, and he wipes his boots on all that crosses his path.

On his former group, trip-hop avatars Massive Attack, he scoffs: "By the time I joined them, they had mellowed out. I wanted to tick people off, I was anti-everything, so I left."

On the trip-hop sound (noir atmosphere combined with hip-hop rhythm loops) that is all the rage coming out of his native Bristol, England: "Hip-hop has been weird for years. These people putting out `trip-hop' records and wearing their baseball caps backward, it's because everybody wants street credibility. They're scared to put out music that says, `This is me.' "

On his album's critical acclaim: "All these other people making music in England are liars. We're the first band out of England since the Specials to be totally real."

To that end, Tricky has no illusions about his lasting significance: "The English press has been so good to me, it's unbelievable, but I'm going to be taken apart soon. It's inevitable."

The collision of beauty and violence in his album reflects his unsentimental grasp on reality. "Maxinquaye" is named after his mother, who committed suicide when he was a toddler. His father abandoned him, and Tricky later spent two weeks in jail for forging 50-pound notes. "You have no conscience when you're young," says Tricky, 27. "You feel you can do anything. Going to prison--it all changed in there for me."

Since then he has become one of Britain's most in-demand producer-remixers. The tabloid press suggests he's had romantic dalliances with some of his clients and proteges, such as Bjork and Martine, but Tricky brushes off the rumors with typical bravado.

"My music and lyrics, that's what I love," he says. "Girls will always be second place."

Tricky headlines Tuesday at the Double Door.

- The most confounding question about the Red Hot Chili Peppers' new album, "One Hot Minute" (Warner), is why these longtime L.A. lunatics are trying so hard to sound like Stone Temple Pilots.

The first single, "Warped," and the title track in particular mimic the generic grunge-metal of STP as the Peppers continue to flirt with unimaginative hard rock instead of the rap-funk-and-punk that was their mid-'80s signature.

The quartet has never been really great on record; they're arguably the biggest underachievers of all the significant '90s bands when it comes to putting together consistently inviting studio albums.

But producer Rick Rubin helped the band clarify some of its ideas on "Blood Sugar," and he has sharpened the band's attack further on "One Hot Minute." Now the ratio of throwaways to keepers is about one-to-one, which makes this the Peppers' most consistently listenable effort.

Singer Anthony Kiedis has toned down his antics for something approaching compassion, and the band achieves an unexpected lightness on the poignant "Aeroplane," while "Walkabout" cannily recycles the groove of War's "Low Rider."

No longer bawdy, the Peppers save their most frenzied moments for bashing TV preachers ("Shallow Be Thy Game"), "dancing like Iggy Pop" and cursing out homophobes ("Pea").

While hardly as momentous as its record company would have us believe, "One Hot Minute" presents a band in the throes of figuring out that if it wants to play amphitheaters next summer, it had better have some catchy songs to blast toward the lawn seats.